What should happening? Well better procurement for a start, instead of getting picked off one-by-one by suppliers and consultancy companies, government bodies and local authorities should be getting together and telling the suppliers and consultants what the citizen wants and what their role might be in providing that, if they want the business.

Money is short now at the taxpayer level and if we are going to match that situation at a government level we’ll have to sharpen up process and outcome across the board and stop reinventing wobbly wheels! We can’t keep shelling out for every new technical fad and fashion or be expected to pay for the bloatware some suppliers sell us as software applications.

United we stand, divided we keep paying through the nose!

Andrea also picks up am interesting “Top ten for Gov 2.0 in 2009“. Government IT staff will appreciate number one!

He also provides a link to a more recent article of his on the politics of e-democracy entitled ”Would You Ask Turkeys to Mandate Thanksgiving? The Dismal Politics of Legislative Transparency“, published in the Spring 2009 issue of the Journal of Information Technology & Politics.  

I have little trouble agreeing with him having found e-democracy often sidelined, one way or the other, in the e-government debate by officials, politicials and academics. Some using e-democracy as a sales pitch for e-government, some the other way, whilst some just mix the two up. I continue to ask, as Snider does,
whether politicians are going to delegate power that easily!

If you are of a less cynical outlook you may be more appreciative of the new 388 page book from Stanford University “Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice” from editors Todd Davies and Seeta Pena Gangadharan  (Creative Commons licensed) and its free for the PDF!

In his usual charming manner Michael highlights the ignorance of one minister just three years ago, but concludes that 13 years on from the Conservative Green Paper, something might finally happen. I suspect that 13 years is still too soon and Micahel is being optimistic, but what is the cause of his optimism? It’s the EU Ministerial Conference in Malmo, Sweden. For the UK, Bill McCluggage, John Suffolk’s deputy was talking about “A Future that is Efficient, Sustainable and Responsible.”

Andrea di Maio picks up the latest declatation on his blog and does his usual thorough analysis and ends up slightly confused as to where it stands with Gov 2.0, although I suspect for the UK this probably takes on the observation by Michael Cross as to which way we go next year after the election – there are, of course, at least two choices, open up the data or give it to the private sector to open up!

William Heath was also in attendance anf he praises Ton Zilstra’s summary of the event.

For me the key paragraphs are 15 and 17. The first has a list of criteria for earliest switchover where it is also stated that digital switchover means the ‘primary means of access, rather than one among many’, meaning that digital exclusion is alive and well in Digital Britain – in this instance for high volume, low complexity and efficiency (for the government).

The second states that there is a need to consider whether an online only or multi-channel approach is needed.

I wonder who will decide?

http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/broadcasting/6216.aspx